Remembering A. J. Seymour and Martin Carter
ARTHUR James Seymour died on December 25, 1989, hoping (according to his autobiographies) that some academic at the university will continue his scholarship in Guyanese literature.
The life and work of A. J. Seymour is best summed up by Ian McDonald, who noted that Seymour’s “life at one very important level is a record of 50 years of dedicated work in literature. He began in an era when everything was still to be done…his overall contribution to the cultural tradition of Guyana and the Caribbean is truly astonishing. This  amazing man’s work contains poems, historical publications, reviews, broadcasts, essays, addresses, entries in anthologies, forewords, lectures, talks, pamphlets, memoirs, sermons, eulogies, magazine work, and books in such profusion that one would be excused for thinking this was the record of a school, not one man alone.”
Seymour’s prodigious poetry output included more than 500 poems, some captured in almost thirty collections from the first volume, ‘Verse’, in 1937, to ‘70th Birthday Poems’, in 1984.
Other forms of his writing included his invaluable scholarship on Guyanese and Caribbean literature. Some of those titles are, ‘Introduction to Guyanese Writing’, and ‘The Making of Guyanese Literature’,  ‘A Survey of West Indian Literature’ and ‘Studies in West Indian Poetry’.
In addition to his writing, he edited numerous anthologies of poetry. But the true mark of his editorship came by way of ‘Kyk-over-al’, a local journal which also encompassed the literature of the Caribbean, and the ‘Kaie’ journal which captured the literature and culture of Guyana, extending to the Caribbean with the journal’s coverage of Carifesta events.
All in all, his poetry, scholarship, autobiographies and other genres of writing effectively mapped the course of his life, and the history of the development of a Guyanese literature.
Seymour’s love for reading and writing started in his formative years, and developed apace (with his other interests and duties). When he was approaching seven, something happened, which he described as his “second vivid recollection… One day, a box of books was delivered to the gallery of the house, and was opened to reveal 20 volumes of a series edited by Arthur Mee called ‘The Books of Knowledge’. This led to his confessing, “before I became eleven, I was reading everything I could put my hands upon.”
This avid reading constrained him to express himself, leading to the other level of literacy: Writing. Seymour was a prolific writer who started keeping a diary at age 22 because “biography and autobiography have not been the strong suits in Anglo-Caribbean bibliography,” and because he had the urge “to write primarily as a means of self-discovery.”
This desire to write also stemmed from his discovery of “the element of creativity in myself, and was intent on protecting and developing that gift,” and wanting “a fuller deeper understanding of the workings” of his mind.
His marriage in 1937 to Elma resulted from his love for literature. Arthur James Seymour had become interested in Elma Bryce because, as he once declared: “I had realised that she had in her memory more line of Milton’s ‘Lycidas’ than I had at the time, and this knowledge first prompted my curiosity in her.”
In 1943, when the British Guiana Union of Cultural Clubs was organised, Seymour was named Honorary Secretary. Seymour was also part, and the main mover, of a number of other literary groupings, including the British Guiana Writers Association, which came into being on December 28, 1944; the Diogenes Club, discussing essays, and The Library Committee of which the late Cheddi Jagan was a member.
Wherever he went or lived, he found himself in the environment of a literary nature. During a 30-day sea trip on the ‘Marine Marlin’, he formed a cultural group, and started a magazine! He was never at sea when it came to literature. Poet, literary critic, radio programmer/broadcaster, anthologist, ‘nativist publisher’ and cultural historian, A. J. Seymour was born on January 12, 1914.

Martin Carter

On December 13, 1997, Martin Carter died amidst political turmoil in Guyana. Although his writings reflected the social and political history of this country, Carter’s poetry is universally relevant, so much so that some of his poems were translated into Spanish, Dutch and Hindi.
Martin Carter was born on June 7, 1927, in Georgetown, British Guiana. His father, Victor Emmanuel, was an avid reader, and his mother, Violet Eugene Wylde, loved books and enjoyed reciting verses.
Although young Carter did well at Queen’s College, he soon became fed up with schooling and disillusioned with the teaching, perhaps a disciple of Mark Twain who said, “I never let schooling interfere with my education.”
So Carter entered the world of work, also working diligently at his poetry, putting out his first collection, ‘The Hill of Fire Glows Red’ in 1951, with the assistance of A. J. Seymour’s Miniature Poets series of publications.
The following year, he published ‘The Hidden Man’ and ‘The Kind Eagle’. In the early 50s, Carter became actively involved in the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) and the radical politics of the British colony.
After the suspension of the Constitution, and the reversion to direct British rule in 1953, he was detained by the authorities, and remained in custody for three months. Some of the poems he wrote while in incarceration were published as ‘Poems of Resistance’ in 1954, thereby establishing his Caribbean and international reputation.
Also in the year 1953, in January, he married Phyllis Howard, a union lasting some four decades, even though many times during the night, he would disturb their sleep because he found a right word or phrase to insert in his writing. (Rest in Peace, Phyllis)
After a second detention, this time in 1954, due to what Ian McDonald described as his “passionate defiance in the face of flawed authority,” Carter turned to an unlikely profession of being a school teacher from 1954 to 1959.
In 1959, he joined the Booker Group of Companies, and remained as Bookers’ Chief Information Officer until 1967. During that period, having shifted from one political camp to the other, he published, in 1964, ‘Jail Me Quickly’, and the following year, 1965, he represented Guyana at the Commonwealth Poetry Conference in Cardiff.
The year 1966 found him on a delegation to Marlborough House discussing Guyana’s Independence. Between 1967 and 1970, he held the portfolio of Minister of Information and Culture.
In 1975, Martin Carter spent an academic year at Essex University as Poet in Residence, “the longest period he was away from Guyana.”  In 1977, he was appointed Artist in Residence at the University of Guyana.  That year saw the appearance of ‘Poems of Succession’, followed by ‘Poems of Affinity’ in 1978, in empathy with yet another political party, writing ‘For Walter Rodney’ and ‘Bastille Day – Georgetown’.
In 1989, ‘Selected Poems’ won the Guyana Prize for Literature in the category of Best Book of Poetry.
Twice he was honoured by the government of the day: In 1970, he received the Cacique Crown of Honour, and in 1994, the Order of Roraima.
‘Where have all the flowers gone’ was his favourite song, and my favourite quote of his work is ‘the middle where we meet is not the place to stop’.
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